Ajmal Kasab's hanging: Operation X carried out in silence

For a nation that revels in the description of the "argumentative Indian", it pulled off a rare feat — Operation X to execute the sole-surviving Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Kasab — in complete silence.

NEW DELHI: For a nation that revels in the description of the "argumentative Indian", it pulled off a rare feat — Operation X to execute the sole-surviving Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Kasab — in complete silence.

To ensure that no last-minute hitches challenged the operation, key elements of the national security apparatus worked seamlessly to ensure that the operation went off as planned. Sources said a degree of secrecy was required to prevent random filing of injunctions with the Supreme Court and delaying the execution. The fulcrum of the operation was Union secretary R K Singh, who coordinated with his counterparts in the MEA, Maharashtra government and Rashtrapati Bhavan so that everybody moved in a synchronized manner.

Sources said that Centre accepted Maharashtra DGP Sanjeev Dayal's suggestion not to remove the posse of ITBP jawans deputed at Arthur Road jail for Kasab's security to eliminate the possibility of anybody getting a whiff of Kasab's shift to Yerwada Central Jail. Singh, who had instructed ITBP brass to play along with Dayal, chose secure lines to co-ordinate, shunning the standard channels of communication.

Only a handful knew that Kasab would hang on November 21 morning. Besides Singh, these included Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Maharashtra CM Prithivraj Chavan and his deputy R R Patil, Maharashtra DGP Dayal, Maharashtra chief secretary J K Banthia, state home secretary Amitabh Rajan and his colleague, principal secretary in charge of jails Medha Gadgil. Mumbai Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh, Meeran Borwankar, who heads the Yerwada Central Jail, and those at the helm in the state intelligence department and Mumbai CID.

After President Pranab Mukherjee rejected the mercy petition of Kasab, Union home minister Sushil Shinde signed the file for the last time on November 7, and sent it to the Maharashtra government on the same day. On Tuesday, Indian Deputy High Commissioner in Islamabad, Gopal Baglay, met his counterpart in the Pakistan Foreign Office, DG (South Asia), to give a letter from the Indian government and the Maharashtra state government addressed to the next of kin of Kasab informing about the completion of the legal process and his execution on November 21.

The team that carried out the entire operation was also the same one that had seen to the incognito burial of nine others who had come with Kasab for the terror attack. The hanging and burial of Kasab has also been carried out in complete secrecy, including an incognito burial. This was decided in 2008, in order to deny any attempt to create a terrorists' shrine.

The US, too, gave Osama bin Laden a sea burial in the Arabian Sea, after his country of origin, Saudi Arabia, refused to accept his body last year.